


Musical Mendacity

by missmariie



Series: Retail Detail [8]
Category: Castle
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Retail, Drunk Uncles, Finally getting together, Humor, Inappropriate Humor, Kissing, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 07:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4657476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmariie/pseuds/missmariie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys have a somewhat overdue conversation on top of a water tank. </p><p>It's the last fic in the Retail Detail series!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musical Mendacity

**Author's Note:**

> It's the final installment! :) I hope you've all enjoyed reading it. I'm super excited, because all up it's ended up being over 10 000 words!

Kevin poked at the pile of clothing he’d dumped next to mirror with his toe. His damn job made it so hard to dress up. He was either overdressed, or in what he wore every day. 

While he was shuffling through the pile in his third ‘final attempt’, his phone buzzed. 

His work clothes, plus a dorky green jumper would have to do then. 

Great. 

 

Downstairs, Javier was leaning against his car with exaggerated casualness. 

Of course, he looked _nothing_ like he did at work. 

“Wow. I’ve never seen you in so much clothing!” Kevin babbled at him cheerfully until his brain caught up. 

It was, strictly speaking, a totally accurate statement. Javier wore basketball shorts and a polo shirt to work, which seemed to be pretty similar to what he wore in his free time. 

Unfortunately it wasn’t the accuracy of the statement that was the problem. 

Javier cocked an eyebrow at him and tugged self-consciously at the blue button down he was wearing. 

“It, uh, looks nice.” Kevin told him, trying to climb out of the hole he’d dug himself. 

Javier shrugged, a smile leaking into his eyes. 

“Yeah, well let’s head before you manage to scandalise your neighbours again.” 

 

Kevin flipped his breath mint over with his tongue, and smiled over at Javier, who was drumming his fingers on the top of the steering wheel. 

“So it turns out that Beckett’s been reading that column Rick writes for ages. I’ve actually seen her bring it in to work with her before.” Javier told him with a grin. 

“Wait – seriously? I kind of assumed no one read that thing.” 

“Apparently Beckett does.” Javier said, shrugging. “So now I’m pretty sure she either wants to deck him or have his babies.” 

Kevin laughed.

“I’m pretty sure he just wants her babies.”

Javier bit his lip and wriggled his eyebrows at Kevin, and goddamn it if that wasn’t totally hot.

Kevin was so far gone. 

“Yeah, but can you image what a nightmare that’d be.” he said, instead of everything else in his brain. 

Javier looked traumatised by the very idea. 

A familiar sound blurted out of Javier speakers, and Kevin immediately darted forward to change the station. 

“Not your thing?” Javier asked him conversationally.

He looked amused at how quickly Kevin had moved. 

Kevin laughed sheepishly. 

“I actually have no idea what it is, but I think it must be on our work CD, because I just had the overwhelming urge to fold something.” 

Javier snorted. 

“Nah bro, I get you. Work’s given me the weirdest relationship with that hammetime song.” 

Kevin tilted his head.

“What happened?” he asked, fascinated. 

Javier sighed heavily, and relaxed back into his seat a little. His eyes glittered, and his hands shuffled about on the wheel as he dove into his story. 

 

***

 

Kevin always forgot how many relatives he had between these events. 

“They told him that sweet potatoes are the vegetable of love, and being the gullible little shit he was, he totally believed them.” 

Kevin’s sister had centre stage, her fingers flying wildly as she launched into her story while their cousins laughed raucously. 

“I can’t believe you actually dated that loser!” Keagan exclaimed, slapping his knee with his palm. 

“ _Right_.” she agreed. “And then, on Valentine’s Day, he rocks up with a massive raw sweet potato and just hands it to me, no explanation or anything.” 

“Holy shit.” Siobhan injected, nearly sloshing her beer down the front of her shirt as she laughed. 

“Of course, he’d hand washed it…” 

Realising he’d lost Javier in the chaos, Kevin pushed his way back out of the throng. The rest of Lulu’s tale was lost to the hum of noise in the shed. Lulu’s disastrous boyfriend stories were always distracting at best. 

He found Javier nursing a beer and blinking dubiously at one of Kevin’s aforementioned drunken uncles, who appeared to be describing something in the region of his crotch to Javier in excruciating detail. 

“… collar, fake buttons, and the cutest little bowtie, right there.” 

“Hey Uncle Toby!” Kevin interrupted him, arriving just in time to curtail a gesture that was heading for the obscene. 

Javier shot Kevin the kind of look normally reserved for the fireman who just rushed into a burning building to save your only child. 

Uncle Toby grinned at him toothily. 

“Ah, Kevin! How are you? Still after Mr Amadeus Beethoven?” 

“Sure am.” Kevin told him weakly, wincing internally. He seized Javier by the wrist. “Actually, I promised Javier I’d show him the view from the water tank.”

Uncle Toby winked at him as he pulled Javier away. 

 

Once they had escaped back outside, stashing a couple of cans of drink in their pockets on the way, Kevin turned sheepishly to Javier. 

“Sorry about my uncle and his, uh…” 

“James Bond underwear.” Javier supplied dryly. 

Kevin groaned.

“Oh my god. I’m _so_ sorry!” 

Javier shook his head, and jostled Kevin with his shoulder, smiling quietly at him. 

“Anyway, here’s the water tank!” said Kevin, gesturing broadly at the structure in front of them and clinging hopefully to anything to turn the conversation away from his uncle’s underpants. 

Javier blinked at him, and then at the tank.

“Wait – you were actually showing me a water tank?” 

Kevin shrugged, and grabbed on to one of the rungs of the ladder that lead up the side. 

“I think it’s cool.” he protested. 

 

For all of Javier’s mocking during the climb, once they were actually lying side by side on the roof of the tank, he went very still and smiled up at the stars. 

“See? I knew you’d like it.” Kevin told him, spreading his hands on the cold corrugated iron beneath them. 

Javier snorted. 

“We can barely hear your relatives from here.” 

“It’s the small victories that really count.” Kevin agreed cheerfully. 

Really, the noise wasn’t so much gone as muffled and distorted, but the height of the tank created the illusion of isolation and made the bustle below feel far away. 

Kevin closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He could feel where Javier was from the heat that radiated off him. 

“Javi,” he murmured, idly wondering if posing this question on a water tank was asking to be drowned, “why’d you leave the army?” 

Javier’s breath stuttered slightly, and Kevin could feel the warmth drawing away. 

“It was stupid. I was stupid.” Javier said plainly, only the tiniest hint of bitterness lacing the exhaustion in his tone. “I mean, when I got in I knew that it was four years. You know, four years of just… not, and my career was set. And I nearly did it to. If I’d kept my head down for another nine months…” 

Kevin heard, rather than saw him shrug.

“Anyway, I got drunk one night and got caught fooling around and that was it.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Kevin finished.

He didn’t need Javier’s short nod of confirmation. 

“I should’ve thought…” Javier started.

“You shouldn’t’ve had to!” Kevin told him firmly, digging his fingers into his palms and biting down on his lip, shocked at how angry he felt. 

He took a deep breath and reached over, finding Javier’s hand and clasping it tight in his own. 

His head hurt. His heart hurt. He wanted so badly to feel only angry and outraged for Javier, but his treacherous relief rushed in, and curdled his emotions. He _hadn’t_ been misreading things. The mixture of horror, joy and guilt was sickening. He closed his eyes and willed it all away. 

“Kev,” said Javier in a strangled voice beside him, “you’re too sweet.” 

“Huh?” 

“I can’t tell what _this_ is.” said Javier, fingers tightening around Kevin’s palm. 

Kevin couldn’t make sense of it, his thoughts catching on the jumble in his mind. 

“Huh?” he repeated. 

“I can’t tell bro. I dunno if you’re gay or like, weirdly supportive.” 

“Huh?”

In Kevin’s defence, it was a lot to take in. 

Javier’s head made a dull thud as he knocked it against the corrugated iron in frustration. 

“Are. You. Into. Me!?” 

Catching up with proceedings didn’t exactly unscramble Kevin, but it help wash the molasses out of his thoughts. 

“Ohh. Oh. Oh! Yes! Yes. Definitely yes. Definitely into you.” 

Distantly, Kevin heard Nikki Minaj pledge that she was ‘higher than a motherfucker’ into the pregnant silence between them. 

“ _Fucking hell_.” breathed Javier beside him, before rolling over to pull him into an enthusiastic kiss. 

 

The stars had been forgotten in favour of touching. Touching everything; noses, hands, fingers, lips, heartbeats. Kevin felt as if he’d fallen through Javier: only the bite of the outside air left him aware that he had skin Javier wasn’t holding. Javier’s nose was like a point of ice that ran over his face and neck, stopping to nestle wherever it found a pulse. Fingers catching and exploring every nook they found, Kevin burrowed until he could hear the mechanisms of Javier’s body. His nervous excitement left his own perfectly audible. 

It was chaste.

Well, chaste enough. 

Kevin wouldn’t swear that his intentions were entirely pure, and from his magnificent proximity to the shapes and edges of Javier’s body, he could be fairly confident that it was a sentiment they shared. 

Still, too many of Kevin’s younger cousins knew about their hideaway for him to let them tumble off that precipice. Instead, Kevin hummed a song into the hollow of Javier’s neck.

“What’s that?” mumbled Javier, his breath sounding feathery and tight. 

“Weep O Mine Eyes.” Kevin told him, his lips catching against Javier’s skin. 

“Huh?” 

Javier sounded baffled. 

“This,” Kevin tried to gesture between them, but he had too tight a grip on Javier’s fingers, “reminds me of a song we did in aural class.” 

“ _Oral_ class?” 

Now he had Javier’s undivided attention. 

“ _Aural_ class.” 

“That’s what I said!” 

“No, you philistine.” Kevin grouched, pulling himself up from his nest to look at Javier’s smiling face, “ _Aural_ , like, _listening_."

“I don’t think that’s what that means, bro.” 

“ _Aural_ sex would be ear sex, and you’d be on your own for that!” 

“I can’t believe you had an oral class…” 

“ _Aural_. Au-ral. With an a, not an o. Can you not? I was _trying_ to be romantic.” 

Javier flicked his hand in the universal gesture for go on, so Kevin did. 

“Weep O Mine Eyes was a choral piece we studied. It’s really pretty. The rhythm was a bitch though.” 

“ _So_ romantic.” 

“Shut it.” 

Kevin could feel Javier laughing from all around him, which was basically the point he was trying to make. 

“Anyway,” he ploughed on, “at the time it kind of reminded me of Jenny because it has this bit that’s all ‘alas thee, your spring tides’ which was pretty much how I felt about the whole thing at the time.”

Javier’s laughter trailed off, and Kevin began to question the wisdom of this conversation, but in for a penny… 

“So the prettiest part of the song is at the end.” 

He reached out at this point, groping in the darkness for Javier’s hand, and when it was offered to him, using it to pull himself even further into Javier’s space. 

“The song’s all ‘Oh, when begin you’ and says ‘to swell so high that I may drown me in you’, and it just, I mean, I thought tonight was a bit like that.” 

Kevin took a few deep breaths of the warmer air that rolled off Javier skin and listened to him chew his lip. 

“I can see that.” Javier agreed quietly, capturing one of Kevin’s legs between his own and pulling him down further into a tight squeeze. 

From there, Javier’s heartbeat overwhelmed the noises of the party. 

“So… were you any good at aural?” Javier asked playfully after a moment, prodding Kevin’s side with his cold fingers. 

“Well, I’m no flutist, but I like to think I’m pretty boss at it.”

“Why are flutists good at aural?” asked Javier, huffing a laugh against Kevin’s ear. 

Kevin dove down to muffle his giggles in Javier’s collarbone. 

“Well, they do this thing with their tongues…”

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand it's done! 
> 
> Thank you for reading :) Love in the form of comments and kudos is always appreciated!


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